Half-Elves of the Steel Realms

Posted on October 3, 2015 in Steel-Realms

Half-Elves of the Steel Realms
@RP Impact: Half elfs have a genetic imbalance giving them a Short Fuse.
Cultural Stigma: As a mixed race, they suffer Weak stigma everywhere; Their Stigma Offset(s) are > skilled, practiced, loyal

Further Race/Species Details

Reactions based on Point of View

This represents a general bias based on typical POV. PCs and NPCs may be able to change the Reactions through hard work and example… but face a major battle to change people’s biased opinion.

Unwelcome: Umbak, Kaald

Accepted: Dunstrand, Merchant Cities

Welcomed: N’lokrha

• i20™
• iCore™

These halfbreeds are common – roughly about 80,000 exist, and most (half of them) in N’lokrha. Half elves are generally not welcomed, due to their alien features, temper and instability, but do not evoke the animosity Half Orks do. Half elves have the parentage of an elf and a human or other half breed. Sometimes dormant elven blood can evince itself in a generation – usually as twins of opposite genders. As children, they have distinctly elven features and grow slower (50-150 years longer than a human), making them more tolerable to an elven parent. Exposure to the sun and elements changes this as they go through puberty (age 18), and many are cast out by age 25. Half elves are universally shunned, often living at the outside of society and paying more for goods and services, and folk are less inclined to help them.

Features

• Grudge-Bearing: I remember every insult I’ve received and nurse a silent resentment toward anyone who’s ever wronged me.
• Short Fuse: They are unable to overcome this, though their Short Fuse is greatly reduced when dealing with others of their own kind (where they are accepted). Otherwise, violence is the answer to almost any challenge.

Compensated Skill: Half-elves try and compensate for their ill-temper by focusing in their Charisma (to try and avert the threshold of of their Ill-Temper feature); Many choose to forgo this emphasis and change the focus to improving existing skills to compensate.

Weakened Presence: Those born without a Soul Gem or Faey-Sight ae physically less hardy.

Confident Amidst Nature: Half-elves growing up in the wild offset penalties to physical skills and survival capabilities from low Attributes.

Alien Countenance: The features of the half elves are a pronounced angular chin and cheek bones, odd color skin, strange hair colors and patterns, wide then eyes, left handedness (75%), and thin lips. Their fingers and toes are long, and they are typically thin for their size. Their features are ugly to both elves and humans. Half elves are normally born without an elvish Soul Gem (and cannot begin as Flora Bound, like full elves), though those few that are have eyes that “sparkle” with flecks of green and gold. The few born with Faey Sight have their eyes irritated around the edges from dryness, and have a tendency to stare unblinking.

“The Cut Ones“: A half elf that has been exposed for days unblinking in the light of the full sun and moon, and cut the tips of their ears off, shaved their head and slicing their face. At the end of a week, assuming they dont die from infection, they heal. Their angular features and tell-tale signs of being a half elf are gone – eyes, skin, and hair color become washed out and human-like. Any soul gem they may have had cracks and turns to dust and its place is a deep scar (though they can be soul bound again, if they find a way). They are considered human for all intents and purposes. All powers gained through their ancestry and race are lost.

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Halflings in the Steel Realms

Posted on September 18, 2015 in Steel-Realms

Halflings of the Steel Realms
@RP Impact:
Cultural Stigma: As a mixed race, they suffer Weak stigma outside The Noble East; Their Stigma Offset(s) are > charming, curious, useful

• Point of View
• Unwelcome
• Tolerated
• Welcomed

Individual circumstances around Social Dealings will override any absolute predisposition.

Further Race/Species Details

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• iCore™

Culture and Society

Flight of Fancy: Close to the cultures of their Skraeling kindred, they possess a strong sense of fanciful style and constant humor. Constant invoking or irony, sarcasm or jokes; especially laughing at their own jokes. Bright colors, adopting a posh or crude accents/manners (sometimes to mock and ridicule), hum and whistle a lot. Talk or refer in third person to themselves. Though amusing, shopkeepers, guardsmen, crafters, bureaucrats and the like have no patience for such obvious superficial things and often become irritated and have a negative reaction. A common merchant saying is that “A halfling never knows when bartering is done.”

Faith and the Divine

The halflings as a race have no set faith. By default, most make up an a-la-cart menu from the Wylde Horde, The Rimbus (faerie earth-spirits; Uorfek), Rempheros (dead faith of the Bronzemen) and other more obscure and esoteric offshoots of mainstream doctrine.

The Afterlife: Really, the halflings dont care much. If pressed, most will say its “just like here, but better!” Thinking too far into the future is not really something they are terribly interested in – much like their Skraeling kin. Most would love to believe the game of life never really ends, the rules just change as you go from one square to another.

Origins

Halfling are the result of the original blessing of the Tear Gift of Ezrilus, interbreeding the Skraeling and Human stock.

Locations

Halflings have a unique temperament (shared with their Skraeling kin) that, while welcome in small doses, most find irritating and annoying. For this reason, they have congregated together in scattered smaller communities, or in three places especially in the realms.

Free States: The halfling folk are not especially fond of tight laws, and “bowing and scraping” to lords. They band together for defense and to have a place where they are safe. They use terrain as barriers to these “Free States” (Freeholds) that keep outsiders from making easy inroads. At the edges of the states, they trade, conduct diplomacy, and keep many active scouts, called “Freewardens“, on the lookout for incursions by other races and forces outside their casual outlook. In several places they are under a formal charter of a Protectorate and there they are protected as a Duty Station for the High King’s Army.

• Protectorate of Loamwold
• Montwold Pass Protectorate

Ecology

Other References

• Freewardens (Halfling Protector)
• Haelf Singers

Faerie Elves in the Steel Realms

Posted on September 18, 2015 in Steel-Realms

Faerie genus in the Steel Realms have more variety even than humans, though their population size is much smaller. Like any population, the normally life-allied elven population has its share of Faey, as well as the fallen ones that dwell in the underlight and persist by blood – Faet m’un. There are those which breathe underwater (Glyddin; “Sea Elves”), which fly and breathe the thin high air (Syphim; “Winged Elves”), and all manner and size of land dwelling variety. These are divided into two ‘camps’ as seen by the rest of the species on Helca; The deep forest dwelling Ynthian Elves and the Wyld Elves of open plains and natural places outside of the Forest of Ynth. There are no known settlements of the ancient Aelfs left on Helca – if there were ever any. Faerie races are treated with suspicion, as they are nearly as adaptable as humans and in direct competition most of them, but inscrutable to most humanoids.
@RP Impact: Reaction penalty in some places. Most faerie enclaves have some group that are Faerie Wind Weavers.

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• iCore™

Faey elves become incredibly powerful, very quickly, twisting their powerful soul-gem into a dead one, an intuitive tunnel to the power of the void.

Long Life Thread

Nearly ALL faerie races have a Long Life Thread, living more than 200 years.

d20 Raise Dead and equivalent/d20 Revivify and equivalent: Creatures with a Long Life Thread (ex: Elves) cannot be targeted by either of these spells (they simply fail) – it takes stronger spells to impact the character enough to bring them back from the dead.

Folk of copse and hill, folk of glade and wood, folk of sea and wave, folk of cloud and breeze, folk of grass and sky

Faerie-Kin

Elves: Wild (sylvan) and Ynthian

Obscure Knowledge / Near-Impossible Difficulty

Displacement of the Aelfs: Only the elves of Ynth know that at one time about 500,000 years ago, their ancient brethren, the Aelfs, once dwelt on Helca. Were it not for only trace evidence of their spirits in Ynth, no one would know. The Aelfpaths of Helca were made by them, discovered by the elves of Ynth, and their existence kept secret. Once Ynth began its decline, more have become aware of them and started to explore them. The Elves of Ynth only know that at one point, they were on Helca, and then they were gone – before the coming of the Celestials. They do not know about the massive amount of Augmentum ( as it is known in the realms) that drew them. It also drew the dragons, and made powerful their dreams. Before a terrible war between the two could break out, the Aelfs left Helca completely, after only about 50,000 years of living peacefully and quietly.